The City Trap by John Dalton

weed. He had a brain full of feathers and the world seemed like a cinema set he roamed with disbelief. He felt
uncomfortable. Deep within him was a needle of fear, an insidious worry that kept him jittery. The anxiety had grown when Mary had a break-in. In the middle of the day when Jerry lay prone,
spliffed and watching soap, someone had gone in and trashed her darkroom. He hadn’t heard the intruders, but when he found out he almost collapsed at the thought of such malevolence coming so
close. Mary was not sympathetic. Jerry resolved to pull himself together, but the hours were long and the temptation great. He wiped sweat off his brow and struggled to breathe. A bus edged into
sight. But would he be able to count the change for his fare?
    Inside, it had to be one hundred and rising. There was no prospect of escape as the bus began its slow crawl through the suburbs. It wasn’t long before Jerry got the shakes. An irritating
twitch on his thigh to begin with, then a tic on his cheek and finally an awful sense that his head wasn’t properly attached to his body. It really felt like his head was wobbling, that
he’d suddenly lost the supportive aid of a spine. If held in his hands it felt all right, but left on its own, his head could’ve been a balloon flopping and straining to escape. Jerry
began to think everyone was looking at him. Those hot faces that normally look anywhere but at another face, they were now slyly turning their eyes to watch the jelly-head wobble. He didn’t
know what to do. There was no escape. He found himself slipping down in the seat. He pushed his head against the window and wedged a hand under it. This stopped the wobbling, but then his head
vibrated in synchronicity with the engine of the bus. Jerry sneaked a look at the snooping passengers. Why the fuck didn’t they suffer? Such complacent faces like stupid sheep off to the
slaughterhouse! He groaned and squeezed further into his caged space. Would the driver never stop?
    He did stop. Jerry teetered onto the baking pavements of the city centre and resolved to walk the last few miles home. Out in the open, there was no more confinement to face. But the world still
seemed out to harm him. Vertiginous buildings bending over and hurting his head. People blocking and bumping into him. People who sneered malevolently or mugged him with their eyes. Jerry kept his
head down. He heard whining sounds, sounds like forks scraping plates or chalk on the blackboard. Dragging his legs along the hot pavements, he managed to haul himself away from the crowd and out
to the quieter backstreets. Jerry still kept his head down. For some reason, he found himself distrusting gravity, fearing that if he looked up, he would fall from the ground and hurtle to the
clouds.
    The leafier suburbs closer to home offered a kind of relief. Fewer cars or people on the streets and the relative silence made things better for a while. But there seemed no way Jerry could get
back to his normal old stuttering self. He soon began to suspect the silence and wondered why no one was about. Were all the people, the nerds, deliberately staying inside to avoid the
wobble-headed loony? Or were they watching from behind those net curtains? Looking for signs of non-conformity or little misdemeanours they could shop him for? That really kept his head down but it
didn’t help much. There were so many trees in the streets – poplars, planes and limes – and they began to seem more threatening than the clouds. The limes were the worst. Horrible
sweaty leaves covered in grime, and pallid flowers that looked like excreta from an alien planet. It was a lime tree that finally flipped him. Jerry just happened to glance up and there it was. A
scrawny, grey monstrosity sat on a branch just above him. It had beady eyes and a white corrosive head. Jerry staggered to a halt and flopped against a privet bush. He tried to keep hold of
himself, to enforce the voice of reason that